GDS Worker Had Under Five Years’ Regular Service At Cut-Off: CAT Upholds Postal Assistant Exam Rejection

The applicant, a Scheduled Caste candidate, was provisionally appointed as GDS Branch Postmaster with effect from 13 September 2010 and regularised with effect from 28 March 2014.

She applied to sit the LGO Residual Vacancy Examination for Postal Assistant/Sorting Assistant posts. The Department rejected her application for failure to meet the five-year service requirement.

After an interim order permitted her to take the examination, with her result to be kept in a sealed cover, she challenged the rejection before the Tribunal.

The notification required five years of continuous GDS service by the relevant crucial date; for the 2019 vacancy year, that date was 1 January 2019.

The examination notification required GDS candidates to have completed five years of continuous service as of the crucial date applicable to the relevant vacancy year.

The Tribunal accepted that, for this eligibility assessment, the applicant’s service was reckoned from her regular appointment on 28 March 2014, rather than her provisional appointment in 2010.

The Tribunal also held that Scheduled Caste status did not dispense with the prescribed minimum service requirement.

The judgment identifies no statutory provision or named precedent as the basis of its decision; it notes a similar issue considered in Anjumol P.R.V. v. Department of Posts, OA No. 618/2020, without further discussion.

The Tribunal relied on the applicant’s regularisation date of 28 March 2014 and the notification’s crucial dates to find that she had not completed five years of regular service by 1 January 2019, the crucial date for the 2019 vacancy year.

It therefore accepted the Department’s conclusion that she failed the service requirement for the vacancies covered by the notification.

The Tribunal rejected her reliance on her earlier provisional service and her Scheduled Caste status as grounds to excuse that requirement.

The Original Application was dismissed, with no order as to costs.